“Just there,” said Kouzos, pointing to an area beneath the olives on which were standing some one hundred and fifty villagers.
“Fools!” roared the Inspector. “Get back! You’re standing all over the clues!”
Hurriedly the villagers retreated and the Inspector, with great care, got down on his knees and with his magnifying glass examined a large area beneath the olive tree, making little grunting noises to himself periodically. The villagers stood and whispered among themselves about how brilliant the Inspector was, how you could see it from the way he was conducting the case and how they were absolutely positive that if anybody could get their donkeys back, he could. Presently the Inspector got to his feet and dusted his knees.
“There are no footprints,” he said, with every evidence of satisfaction, and made a note of it in his book.
“How does he expect to find footprints?” whispered David to Amanda. “The ground is as dry as a bone.”
“If we’d only thought of it,” said Amanda, “we could have put some there for him.”
The Inspector stalked back to the village and sat down once again at the table.
“Now,” he said. “This case has some very curious aspects. Very curious indeed. However, rest assured that I will leave no stone unturned in my endeavours to capture these Communists and have your donkeys returned to you. I, Prometheous Steropes. promise you this.”
There was a murmur of approval from all the villagers. “I have brought with me, as you will see,” continued the Inspector, pointing proudly at the two mongrels who were panting under the café table, “two extremely fine tracking dogs and with their aid we should have no difficulty at all in tracing the whereabouts of the donkeys. However, as it is more than likely that the Communists will be with the donkeys when we locate them, I would like to ask for six volunteers to come with me and my men in case the robbers should put up a fight for it, or, indeed, in case they should outnumber us.”
Six young men of the village stepped forward eagerly. There was no shortage of volunteers. Indeed, from the general surge forward, it appeared that everybody in the village wanted to volunteer. However, the Inspector took the six young men. They felt very proud and happy because they knew now that whenever they walked down the street, the people would say, “Do you see him? He’s one of the people who caught the Communists who stole our donkeys.”
“Now,” said the Inspector, “the first thing to do is to give the dogs a scent. Mr Mayor, would you be so good as to lend me one of your saddle-cloths which we can give to the dogs to sniff?”
Mayor Oizus sent his youngest son running off to his house and he returned bearing a gaudy piece of woven cloth. This the Inspector proceeded to wave under the noses of the two dogs, who sniffed at it, sneezed violently and then sat there panting and wagging their tails.
“They sneezed,” said the Inspector with satisfaction. “That shows they’ve got, the scent.”
He untied the two dogs and, holding on to their leash, proceeded through the village with them, followed by Menelous Stafili. the three policemen from Melissa and the six village boys. The villagers let them get a hundred yards or so ahead and then followed en masse.
The dogs had at first looked upon the whole afternoons’ outing as being rather enjoyable. They had liked riding In the car, for example, although one of them had got so excited that he had been sick on a policeman. But they had been sitting for a long time in the hot sun under the café table, and so now were not unnaturally somewhat bored. Yet here was the kind Inspector willing to take them for a walk. They were delighted. They put their noses to the ground and sniffed all the lovely smells that dogs can smell and frequently dragged the Inspector to one side so that they could cock their leg on a doorway. They sniffed and snuffled round and round in a circle.
“I think they’ve got the scent,” said the Inspector excitedly.
By this time they had left the village and were some distance into the olive groves. The dogs cast about in a circle whining and wagging their tails vigorously, and suddenly they both set off in the same direction.
“Forward, men!” cried the Inspector. “They’re hot on the track.”
The dogs were now straining eagerly at the leash and the Inspector was having to run to keep up with them and his gallant band of men ran behind him. The dogs ran through the olive groves in a wide circle and then reentered the village. They dragged the panting Inspector back through the main square, down several side turnings, up the flight of steps by the village well and then, to the astonishment of everybody (not least the Inspector) they rushed to the door of the Mayor’s house and started scratching at it and whining and wagging their tails delightedly. The Mayor grew pale. He had heard of miscarriages of justice and he could see that if the dogs were taken as evidence, he was going to be implicated in the donkey-stealing plot. The Inspector frowned as he watched the dogs scratching at the door.
“Tell me, Mayor Oizus,” he inquired, “why should dogs have led me to your house?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” said the Mayor, sweating. “I assure you, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Mrs Oizus suddenly. “Don’t you know our bitch is in season?”
A roar of laughter from the assembled villagers greeted this statement and the Inspector flushed a dark red.
“You should have told me that before,” he said curtly. “It could almost have been described as obstructing the law in the execution of its duty.”
“I am very sorry, Inspector,” said Mayor Oizus, casting a malevolent look at his wife. “But I was unaware of this.”
“Well,” said the Inspector, “we will have to try again. We’ll take them farther away from the village where there won’t be so many distractions.”
So they set off through the olive groves until they were a quarter of a mile or so away from the village and then once more the dogs were made to sniff the donkey’s saddle-cloth. Having been deprived of paying a social call on a bitch in such an interesting condition, the dogs philosophically accepted what they imagined to be an ordinary hunting trip. On these (with their own master) they were used to wandering blindly about the countryside until they stumbled upon a hare or flushed a woodcock from under an olive tree, and they could see no reason for varying their performance for the sake of the Inspector. They led him and his men up and down the hillsides, in and out of cane brakes and across small streams, sniffing and wagging their tails, thus giving their human companions constant encouragement. It was not long before they approached a very steep and stony hillside where the Inspector missed his footing and fell into a gully, grazing his shin badly and breaking his magnifying glass. It was here he decided that it would be best to let the dogs off the leash.
It was, as it turned out, an extremely unwise thing to do. Within a very short space of time, the Inspector and his men had lost all contact with the dogs, and, spreading out in search of them, soon lost all contact with each other as well. The dogs continued gaily over the hills and then, finding that their human companions were not, apparently, any longer interested in the hunt — since they had not joined them — they decided to cut back to the village and pay the social call on the Mayor’s bitch that they had been deprived of earlier.